Click it Good: A guide to Internet Advertising

This column first appeared on RimoftheWorld.net on October 19, 2009

How to use pay per click, banner ads and email marketing to sell widgets

Several people have asked me if the ads that appear in orange boxes throughout my weekly ROTW columns have anything to do with my business and/or blogs.

The simple answer is, “No!”

The ads you see weaving in and out of my text are placed there by affiliate advertisers who want to capitalize on RIMOFTHEWORLD.net traffic to sell their products and services.

I take particular offense to the ad that so often pops up in my pieces, that says, “Lose embarrassing belly fat now.” Since advertisers generally try to place their online ads in places that make sense, I wonder if they checked out my head shot and figured, naturally, the best advertising marriage is weight loss.

Whatever their reasons for associating my writing with an intense desire to lose weight, promoters advertise on websites, search engines and blogs because they know that, despite all of the buzz about free advertising with social networking, in the final analysis, it still makes sense to ante up for business leads.

But what exactly is the payoff and how much do you have to invest in order to secure actual paying customers? The answer is as individual as your business budget. Before we get into specifics about costs and strategies, let’s discuss the three most popular forms of paid electronic advertising.

1. Pay Per Click

Advertisers pay their host only when words and word combinations they successfully bid for, are clicked. Internet searches produce two very different types of results:

Natural or organic results are determined by closely guarded algorithms that match Internet content with search terms.

Sponsored search engine services like Google Ad Words or Yahoo Search Marketing are results that advertisers pay for. These are included in the top two or three search results, as well as to the right of the search screen, inside a light pink box, or noted as “sponsored links.”

2. Display Advertising

This type of advertising is paid per click, per impression or per term. Display ads typically contain text, logos, photographs or other images, maps, and similar items, which appear on the same page as, or on the page adjacent to, general editorial content.

The text boxes that appear inside my columns fall into this category as does the http://mountainmarketinggroup.net ad at the top of the RIMOFTHEWORLD.net masthead. Display ads allow sponsors to effectively target their audience based on publication and website user-profiles.

Banner advertisers efficiently track and measure which websites, blogs or publications result in the highest number of direct responses, known as “click-through-rates.”

Affiliate marketers gain Internet real estate by offering click-through revenue to blog authors and webmasters. Successful Internet writers earn money by allowing affiliate advertising to run on their sites.

One of the reasons we advertise our agency on ROTW.net is because they charge by the month, which is easy on the budget, instead of by-impression, which is a bit unpredictable.

3. Email Marketing

Despite being considered a bit passé in web 2.0, emails remain popular for targeting prospective customers.

At the risk of being blocked as “spammers,” email marketers continue to advertise using this method because it is inexpensive and targeted. Emailing to people who have voluntarily surrendered their email addresses assumes at least a passing interest in whatever product or service an advertiser wishes to promote.

So which method should you pursue? I suggest you choose a strategy based on which budget, below, reflects the amount you can afford to spend on advertising. Remember, before you decide, that most experts agree you should invest at least 4-8 percent of your previous year’s gross sales on marketing.

Tight (I can’t even afford to pay attention.)

When funds are scarce, the bottom line is that you have to advertise. Don’t wait until you no longer have a business to promote. Email marketing is probably your best bet.

• Gather business cards you collect at chamber mixers and networking events and enter email addresses into your contact list.
• Create a brief, straight-forward email, with an attention-grabbing subject line, that does not promote your product or service so much as it provides an answer to your end-users point of pain. Focus on what your customers need to hear, instead of on what you want to say.
• Give your recipients a reason to reply. The best way to do this is to offer a discount or giveaway.
• Send the emails.
• Measure your results.
• If your campaign didn’t work, change it up. Don’t give up until you find the secret sauce.

Limited (I have a few bucks to spend. But I have to be careful.)

• Find a website whose users match the profile of your customer-base and which provides banner advertising payable by term instead of by impression.
• Hire someone to design an ad that will produce a direct-response.
• Commit to the strategy for at least three months.
• Measure your results.
• If your ad doesn’t bring in revenue, alter one element of the ad, or its location, at a time.
• Use the revenue generated from your campaign to pursue a second form of Internet advertising.

The Sky’s the Limit (Money is no object. And, yes, believe it or not, some business owners fall into this category, even in this economy).

Experts agree that people need five touches with your organization or product before they will make the move from prospect to client. Since your advertising budget affords you the luxury to pursue all five at once, results will be swift. I suggest the following:

• Hire someone to develop an effective ad campaign.
• Buy associated ad words on Google or Yahoo.
• Send an email blast to introduce the campaign.
• Invest in Pay per Click display ads.
• Run banner ads on high-trafficked websites and blogs.
• Watch the money roll in.

If Microsoft search engine Bing becomes as popular as predicted…it will require new optimization tactics.

If Microsoft search engine, Bing, becomes as popular as predicted…it will require new optimization tactics.

So you’ve worked hard to be ranked on the first page of Google Search.  Congratulations! But then along comes Bing. Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine and in less than a year when Microsoft takes over Yahoo’s search infrastructure, it could account for over 30% of the U.S. search market.

And Bing ranks pages differently than Google. There is less emphasis on inbox traffic and more on content and key words. The same strategy will not optimize both.

So the landscape and the challenges could drastically change. Microsoft is still tweaking Bing, but it will definitely be different then Google. That may mean a company may need two websites, one to optimize for Google search and one for Bing.  That of course will require more financial and personnel commitment.

So just when we were about to have it figured out and enjoy the fruits of successfully being organically found on the first page of Google search, there is a new player who has great potential to capture significant market share.

It’s still a bit early to develop strategies for Bing, but if they do manage to get 30% or more market share it cannot be ignored. Investment in Goggle search will lose 30% of its value and two parallel strategies for search engine optimization will be required. It’s not something marketers want to hear but it’s something to watch and be prepared for.

Angel Locsin

Folded and Hung, one of the leading clothing company in the Philippines is working with Philippine National Red Cross to help the victims of ONDOY. Recently, they made their charity campaign using their own design shirts and the proceeds of this will be given to Philippine National Red Cross.

F&H Top Endorser Angel Locsin poses for the campaign with Joanne Zapanta Red Cross Governess. We all know that Ms. Locsin has been helping the victims from the start and by this campaign she could still help them in a different way.

This shirt will be available in all Folded and Hung outlets nationwide.

Ronal Pineda, F&H President with Angel Locsin

Team FH w/ Joanne Zapanta, PRC Governess

Do me a favour today, would you?  Go and try out the new Yahoo! search engine over at http://uk.search.yahoo.com

You may recall that I work for Yahoo! so I have a bit of bias in their favour, but I honestly think that the new search results page is genuinely better than anyone else’s.  Really – even better than Google’s.

Yes, I know everyone loves Google because “it’s just better” (actually, in independent tests it isn’t), and I know all of us can seldom be bothered to change our ways once we get set in them and we’re all used to Google, etc., etc.

However…

Give the new-look Yahoo! search a try and I think you might be pleasantly surprised -  I know I was, even after having to sit through a cringe-worthy presentation from the US about it yesterday!

And hey, if you like the new search results page and are now feeling bold and adventurous then why not take a look at the Yahoo! front page, which also had a massive and quite daring refurb just recently – allowing you to customise its look and content according to your taste.

As a favour?  For me?

In the UK www.BT.com is one of the major ISP’s with a large chunk of the ISP market, and until recently, they offered a search function from their homepage which was powered by Yahoo Search. However in a very strange turn, it now looks like Yahoo is still hosting the search function; however it is using the Google Search results to power its search function – Very strange!

Now strange as this is on its own (Yahoo using Google results instead of its own), you also have to ask the question why it has not decided to use its new partners (pending review – Bing.com) search results over Google, as surly this would have strengthened the relationship for the struggling Search engine.

Could it be that Yahoo has realised that although Bing’s new platform is good, maybe it is not quite as good as Google yet and Yahoo simply want to increase their profit sharing capabilities while it still can?

In one of my conversations with daddy via Skype, we talked about blogs, especially why do I have to ask him everytime we talk to view and read my posts often (haha!). I pointed out that this is a way of helping her daughter in her academic needs. Aside from that, our conversation reached SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and what it can do to one’s personal site.

It really helps when your parents are computer and net-literate because explaining new social media becomes easier. So, here it is, extension of my OrCom 152 class discussion. (Here it is, daddy!)

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for search engines and searchers. It is through SEO that your site can easily be seen in search engines like Google and Yahoo Search and more people will visit your website.

Why is SEO important?

• SEO allows your site to be at the top list when titles, tags, and other words related to your site and posts are typed in search engines.
• It increases the credibility of your site.
• It enhances your online presence and reputation by giving a credible site as a result when your name is typed for example.

Do I need to get special services for SEO?

You don’t have to get a professional to do SEO for your site. You can do it by yourself.

Here are the tips for optimizing your site:

1. Make your site and its content reader-friendly.

• Make sure your site is easy to navigate (and not an eye sore )
• Put headings and subheadings
• If possible, don’t make your posts too long (most people have short attention span)
• Be concise
• Present lists in bullet form
• Use bold, italic, and underline to highlight ideas
• Add relevant pictures
• Use appropriate tone (formal?informal?conversation-like?)
• Contribute knowledge and information to your readers

2. Mind others’ businesses

• For blogs, create a blogroll
• Link up other sites related to yours
• Reply to comments you receive and comment to others’ posts (this will help the number of your visitors increase)

3. Promote your site

• Make RSS feed or feed subscription available to your site
• Have good choice of tags
• Submit your site to these feedreaders:

My Yahoo!        Bloglines       NewsGator          My MSN         Pluck       Feedster.com      Syndic8.com       Pingomatic.com

• For blogs, submit your blog to blog listings like:

technorati.com        blogsearchgoogle.com     blogorama.com       blogpulse.com        topblogs.com.cph       daypop.com       ratified.org

• Put a link to your website in your social networking accounts
• Make your site’s URL your status in Yahoo! Messenger and Skype (haha!)
• Write your site in your business cards or include it at the end of your email (I don’t know how you call that)
• Use word-of-mouth technique (hehe!)

OOPS! I think this is too long already but I hope you, especially my dadi, learned something from this post. I intend to share something else here.  Maybe I’ll just create a separate blog for that haha!

I am lucky to get the new layout, originally uploaded by Terence Yim.

Though a little bit off topic, looks like it starts rolling out.

While the number of visits are getting increased to your website, you will have good rank in search engines listing. This process may take several days based on the visits and the SEO methods taken care.

The following are some of the SEO tips to get your website in best listings of search engines.

• In your site design, use text rather than images and Flash for important content
• Make your site work with JavaScript, Java and CSS disabled
• Organise your site such that you have pages that focus on a particular topic
• Avoid HTML frames and iframes
• Use normal URLs, avoiding links that look like form queries (http://www.example.com/engine?id)
• Market your site by having other relevant sites link to yours
• Find the best keywords and description for meta tags
• The Title and META tags should be different on every page of your website
• Optimize your web page title. Since google will display first 66 characters, make sure that your page title will be less than 66 chars.
• Use proper headings in the page
• Use proper “title” and “alt” attributes for your HTML elements
• Use image names relevant to the content
• Create site map which will covers each and every page
• Create robots.txt with the following content

  User-agent: *

  Then save the file as robots.txt and upload it to your root directory on your domain. This one command will tell any spider that hits your website to “please feel free to crawl every page of my website”.

  You can also block some important folders like “admin”, “css”,etc from search engines. Here is an example

  User-agent: *
  
  Disallow: /admin/
  Disallow: /css/

• Install sitemap.xml
• Use the <b> </b> tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty
• Keep your webpage free from any syntax error, declare document type at the beginning and validate your HTML and CSS because search engine don?t like pages with too many errors.
  

See also:

• What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?
• My site’s ranking in Google

Note: Search engines will works only for Global IPs

We have already found some pictures of several offices of Google and seen how those, and i may say cool offices, look like but now I accidently came along this site with pictures of the office of Yahoo in Barcelona.

Take a peek : http://officeal.com/offices/yahoo-barcelona/

I’m wondering what the offices will look like after Bing has conquered Yahoo within the next two years (cfr. this dutch article I did yesterday)

Depois de um ano e meio a Microsoft e a Yahoo se juntaram para detonar nas buscas, isso é ótimo, porque agora a Microsoft terá 30% das buscas americanas e os algorítimos, filtros, e tudo o que a Yahoo tem podera ser usado pela Microsoft.
Assim o Bing ficará bem mais poderoso e conseguira mais mercado, mais fama, mais…
Sobre a Yahoo, a marca será mantida, mas haverá algum tipo de propaganda, se você entrar agora no Yahoo search, verá na aba o o slogan “Bing – Yahoo! Search.
Vamos esperar pra ver no que da isso, mas de uma coisa podemos ter certeza, isso vai dar em alguma coisa…

As the competition for search dominance heats up.  Microsoft and Yahoo team up to increase the visibility of their search products.  Bing and Yahoo search will team up to get some ground and on the search engine playing field.

Microsoft has spent millions on their “Decision Engine” campaigns.  With Yahoo Search and Bing together, do they have any chance to compete with Google?

To read more about this, check out Yahoo News.

Yahoo! has finally lost the search battle. It gave up its own search and now a few months old Bing will power Yahoo!’s search. But before we write obituary of Yahoo! Search, there are a few immediate questions that come to my mind:

• Flikr Integration: Yahoo! had a fantastic integration of Flickr in Image Search which made it comparable to Google in terms of relevancy. Will Yahoo! open Flickr to Bing as well? Image search on Bing sucks big time
• Mobile Search – oneSearch: How about ‘oneSearch’? Yahoo! has a good mobile search product in oneSearch and its federated search result pages were a big hit, and had higher market share than Google in many local markets
• Local Search: What happens to Yahoo! Local Search? Or for that matter other search verticals like Jobs, News, Maps? Of all these, Yahoo! had poured a lot of money in Local Search, and I guess Bing is nowhere close to Yahoo! in these verticals. The minority of loyal Yahoo! search users is only going to shrink further if Bing powers these search verticals. A huge opportunity to compete with Google in these verticals (where actually Yahoo! was not lagging way behind of Google and was doing comparably well) goes down the drain
• Social Search: There was a lot of talk of integrating Del.icio.us with Yahoo! Search, which I thought had great promise. Search needs to be more social, and success of Twitter as search engine is for everyone to see. With a strong social bookmarking product like Del.icio.us with it, Yahoo! could have done a lot in search. Wonder what happens now with search technology getting outsourced to Bing?
• Glue: What happens to Glue? Yahoo! launched it last year as a new search product and Yahoo! India Search have Glue pages for a large chunk of popular queries

These questions may be of no relevance once Yahoo! says that its technology is not the one which can provide the best search experience to its user. And as it says that, Yahoo! writes-off all the investment it had put over years in improving its search engine and adding those awesome search features like ‘Search Assist’ to the latest one of ‘Search Pad’. With this, it also writes-off all the effort engineers there had put in building the search and its various features. Carol Bartz announced that there will be lay-offs in search team, and am sure elsewhere also in Yahoo! there will be a huge attrition now.

May be Yahoo! should have just spun-off Yahoo! Search as separate company. That would have unlocked the real value of rest of Yahoo!’s businesses in which it is doing quite well (It is still the most trafficked portal in world. Display advertisement remains Yahoo!’s forte altogether). Market would have determined the right value for this separate search company, and am sure Yahoo! would have got a better price for it than what it has got in this deal.

Back for its second season, the Microhoo now Binghoo search opera is still missing the protagonist  – purported higher CTR and a combined reach still won’t produce the plot’s much needed hero – Relevance.

But stay tuned searchers!

The next episode where – when and if a Microhoo / Binghoo deal happens – will produce new messaging where they proclaim Relevance performs miracles on the screen before your very eyes!